FLAMING
YOUTH
107
came booming and belching up from the west. Pent within the stagnant house the guests established themselves in the big living-room and offered various suggestions for amusement, each of which was promptly re jected as calling for too much effort. Wally Dangerfield was just saying, “The time has now arrived, children, for a new and spine-tickling drink which—” when the crash came. It seemed
to precede rather than follow the blinding
stab of radiance which ripped through the outer darkness, dimming the electric lights to futile sparks for the thousandth of a second before they went out. The great, stone
°
structure
rocked with the concussion.
One thin,
high shriek sounded. Then silence. Wally Dangerfield’s voice boomed through the blackness: “Anyone hurt?” “T’m alive.” “Present.” “Battered but in the ring.” “Missed me.” ‘Whose hair is that singeing?” ‘“Kamerad! Call off the Big Bertha.” The replies came, shaky, flippant, with forced laughter, with bravado. It beseemed good sports to show a front under fire, and they
did it. Matches were struck. Servants came with two feeble candles. The entire electrical establishment of the house was out of commission. The host promptly dispatched a car to the local plant with instructions to bring back an expert if it was necessary to kidnap him. With that one terrific discharge the storm had spent its greatest fury. It retired, leaving the steaming world immersed
in humid heat, and the air full of rotted elec-
tricity. The guests tingled to it; it thrilled in their senses as well as their nerves. After the sobering sense of peril escaped, there followed a relaxing reaction of solvent ties and conventions,
of sudden and reckless au-
